Tag: Dell Compellent

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66: GreyBeards talk Midrange storage part 2, with Sean Kinney, Sr. Dir. Midrange Storage Mkt, Dell EMC

Sponsored by:

Dell EMC Midrange Storage

In this episode we talk with Sean Kinney (@SeanRKinney14), senior director, midrange storage marketing at Dell EMC.  Howard and I have both known Sean for a number of years now. Sean has had multiple roles in the IT industry, doing various marketing and management duties at multiple vendors. He’s back at Dell EMC now and wanted to take on opportunity to discuss Dell EMC midrange storage with us.

As you probably already know, Dell EMC midrange storage dominates their market and has done so for a number of years now. Currently, Dell EMC midrange storage has 2X the revenue of any other competitor.

This is the third time (Dell) EMC has been on our show (see our EMCWorld2015 summary podcast with Chad Sakac, and  Talk with Pierluca Chiodelli sponsored podcast).  Since our last podcast, there’s been plenty of happenings at Dell EMC midrange storage.

Dell EMC Unity and SC storage news

Dell EMC Unity storage has recently added new file data reduction and file sync replication functionality. And a short time ago, Dell EMC came out with an AFA version of their SC Series storage.

With the two midrange product lines there’s been some cross fertilization. That is Dell EMC is starting to take some of the best features from one solution and applying it to the other.

For example,

  • SC series has had its Health Check offering since Compellent days. This is a PS, offered by Dell EMC, that reviews the health of your data center’s SC storage, DR plans, backup activity, IO performance, etc. and provides recommendations as to how to improve the overall storage environment. The Health Check PS is now also available for Unity storage.
  • Unity storage has had its CloudIQ management/monitoring solution since December of 2016. CloudIQ is a big data analytics-remote management, software-as-a-service offering, running in the cloud that allows customers to manage/monitor Unity storage from anywhere. With SC Series’ latest, 7.3 code update, SC storage is also supported under CloudIQ.

We also discussed some of the inherent advantages to SC Series storage, such as their forever software licensing, storage federation/scale out clusters and economical $/GB pricing.

Sean mentioned some of the Future Proof guarantees that Dell EMC offers on both Unity and SC series storage. These include hardware investment protection, data-in-place upgrades, data reduction guarantees, etc.

The podcast runs ~20 minutes. Sean has been around the storage for a long time now and is very knowledgeable about Dell EMC Midrange storage as well as competitive solutions. Howard and I have talked with Sean at a number of industry events in the past and it was fun to talk with him again.  Listen to the podcast to learn more.

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Sean Kinney, Senior Director,  Dell EMC Midrange Storage Marketing

Sean Kinney is an industry leader in the storage and data protection market, with over 20 years of experience in the IT industry.

Currently, he is the Senior Director for midrange storage marketing at Dell EMC.  He spent the first 10 years of his career at EMC, and then held positions including VP and General Manager of online backup at Acronis and Senior Director, Storage Marketing at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.

Sean has a B.A. from Dartmouth College and a M.B.A from the University of Michigan.

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57: GreyBeards talk midrange storage with Pierluca Chiodelli, VP of Prod. Mgmt. & Cust. Ops., Dell EMC Midrange Storage

Sponsored by:

Dell EMC Midrange Storage

In this episode we talk with Pierluca Chiodelli  (@chiodp), Vice President of Product, Management and Customer Experience at Dell EMC Midrange storage.  Howard talked with Pierluca at SFD14 and I talked with Pierluca at SFD13. He started working there as a customer engineer and has worked his way up to VP since then.

This is the second time (Dell) EMC has been on our show (see our EMCWorld2015 summary podcast with Chad Sakac) but this is the first sponsored podcast from Dell EMC. Pierluca seems to have been with (Dell) EMC forever.

You may recall that Dell EMC has two product families in their midrange storage portfolio. Pierluca provides a number of reasons why both continue to be invested in, enhanced and sold on the market today.

Dell EMC Unity and SC product lines

Dell EMC Unity storage is the outgrowth of unified block and file storage that was first released in the EMC VNXe series storage systems. Unity continues that tradition of providing both file and block storage in a dense, 2 rack U system configuration, with dual controllers, high availability, AFA and hybrid storage systems. The other characteristic of Unity storage is its tight integration with VMware virtualization environments.

Dell EMC SC series storage continues the long tradition of Dell Compellent storage systems, which support block storage and which invented data progression technology.  Data progression is storage tiering on steroids, with support for multi-tiered rotating disk (across the same drive), flash, and now cloud storage. SC series is also considered a set it and forget it storage system that just takes care of itself without the need for operator/admin tuning or extensive monitoring.

Dell EMC is bringing together both of these storage systems in their CloudIQ, cloud based, storage analytics engine and plan to have both systems supported under the Unisphere management engine.

Also Unity storage can tier files to the cloud and copy LUN snapshots to the public cloud using their Cloud Tiering Appliance software.  With their UnityVSA Software Defined Storage appliance and VMware vSphere running in AWS, the file and snapshot data can then be accessed in the cloud. SC Series storage will have similar capabilities, available soon.

At the end of the podcast, Pierluca talks about Dell EMC’s recently introduced Customer Loyalty Programs, which include: Never Worry Data Migrations, Built-in VirtuSteram Storage Cloud, 4:1 Storage Efficiency Guarantee, All-inclusive Software pricing, 3-year Satisfaction Guarantee, Hardware Investment Protection, and Predictable Support Pricing.

The podcast runs ~27 minutes. Pierluca is a very knowledgeable individual and although he has a beard, it’s not grey (yet). He’s been with EMC storage forever and has a long, extensive history in midrange storage, especially with Dell EMC’s storage product families. It’s been a pleasure for Howard and I to talk with him again.  Listen to the podcast to learn more.

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Pierluca Chiodelli, V.P. of Product Management & Customer Operations, Dell EMC Midrange Storage

Pierluca Chiodelli is currently the Vice President of Product Management for Dell EMC’s suite of Mid-Range solutions including, Unity, VNX, and VNXe from heritage EMC storage and Compellent, EqualLogic, and Windows Storage Server from heritage Dell Storage.

Pierluca’s organization is comprised of four teams: Product Strategy, Performance & Competitive Engineering, Solutions, and Core & Strategic Account engineering. The teams are responsible for ensuring Dell EMC’s mid-range solutions enable end users and service providers to transform their operations and deliver information technology as a service.

Pierluca has been with EMC since 1999, with experience in field support and core engineering across Europe and the Americas. Prior to joining EMC, he worked at Data General and as a consultant for HP Corporation.

Pierluca holds one degree in Chemical Engineering and second one in Information Technology.